#Miiquality: Score one for civility in social media

This photo provided by Nintendo shows a screenshot from the video game, "Tomodachi Life." The gaming company said it wouldn't bow to pressure from a Mesa man to allow players to engage in romantic entanglements with characters of the same sex.(Photo: AP)

Mesa gamer Tye Marini didn't need name-calling or a boycott to bend the ear of Nintendo execs about including same-sex couples in its Tomodachi Life video game.

Instead, he produced a mild-mannered, well-argued video laying out his #Miiquality social-media campaign, wherein he urged people to buy the game in support of the cause.

It worked. The campaign went viral, and Nintendo's initial, "Yeah? So what?" reaction turned into an apology and a promise to include same-sex relationships in a subsequent release.

What's that saying about catching more flies with honey than vinegar? Marini proved it can still be possible on social media, even if most times it looks like Twitter and Facebook were made to share inane videos and yell at people we don't know.

His tweets remained cordial and on point even in the face of criticism -- and in the process, probably won a whole bunch of new converts to his cause. Imagine how far we could take other important debates if more people followed this 23-year-old's example.